Friday, July 14, 2017

Where the Poppies Blow - The British Soldier, Nature, The Great War ~ John Lewis-Stempel

'Few today would go to war for the fields, woods, brooks of Britain. Or, rather, what is left of them. We have become de-natured and über-urban.'

I take extra convincing to read a book about the First World War these days. That might sound callous and narrow-mined but that's not the case... the truth is that though I have read so much over the years the older I get somehow the more harrowing I find it. I felt I knew enough, almost too much and so, when I saw that Where Poppies Blow by John Lewis-Stempel was on the Wainwright Prize shortlist, I have to own up to a moment of heart-sink at what may be ahead.

Because surely every book that could be written has been written...

Can there possibly be an unexplored angle to this conflagration...

But I had committed to reading as many books as I could and writing thoughts on them here so there could be no exceptions, and I think it is to John Lewis-Stempel's credit, and on reflection to the ordering of the chapters, that I succeeded and with honours, because Where Poppies Blow quickly became a compelling and memorable reading experience over two special days.

Nature, unchanging, 'assured and permanent' and had I ever really given a thought to how reassuring that immutability might have been to the soldiers in the trenches. There was solace and consolation in the seemingly most ordinary of details. 'We've the stars to share,' writes Second Lt. Max Plowman in a letter home. And for the British soldiers it was the landscape that was their identity and heritage. As JLS (we are on initial terms for the forseeable) elaborates, and it was something that explained a great deal, when the British viewed the countryside they saw nature, they saw God...

'British patriotism, unlike the patriotism of other countries, was not based on race, but shared values and love of countryside.'

After introductions JLS turns to the birds of the battlefield among them the nightingales who carried on singing regardless, and the skylarks...

'The song of the skylark was the soundtrack of the war on the Western Front wherever and whenever...'

The birds however were not a comfort to all, for many the sound of birdsong would invoke homesickness and melancholy, though Captain Charles Raven saw the swallows nesting in entrance to company HQ differently...

'These birds were angels in disguise. It is a truism that one touch of nature makes the world kin: those blessed birds brought instant relief to the nerves and tempers of men.

What a sobering thought that in peacetime we seem to have achieved what the war could not, with both nightingales and skylarks now on the RSPB endangered Red List. Indeed in another Wainwright short-listed book, The Wild Kingdom (more about it soon) Stephen Moss suggests that nightingale numbers are down to just 5000 birds in the UK.

John Lewis-Stempel moves on to horses ...160,000 rounded up in August 1914 and I was instantly reminded of a painting Bookhound and I saw recently at Torre Abbey in Devon.

August, Gold of Earth was painted in Plymouth in 1914 by Katherine Maud Hogarth Clay (1880-1930) a direct descendant of the 18th century artist William Hogarth...

As we sat and looked (Torre Abbey's art collection is beautifully laid out, spacious and with strategically placed sofas) we both wondered whether those horses had been sent off to war, whilst having a wry smile at the information alongside with its correction...

What a relief it was to learn that despite the undoubted suffering involved for the horses at least lessons had been learned from the Boer war. With the establishment and training of the Army Veterinary Corps, care of the animals was paramount, with casualty and evacuation protocol when injured mirroring that offered to soldiers.

Out of consideration that some may be eating while reading I'm going to gloss over the Lice and Rats and Microbes chapter but that's not to say I didn't find the details about Clostridium perfringens, Borrelia vincenti and Bacillus fusiforms fascinating and informative in that way that nurses do. Life was miserable for the men but they had ways of dealing with it all.

Moving swiftly onto flowers... well this chapter was a happy revelation though it should have come as no surprise, given the number of gardeners who enlisted, that trench flower beds were prolific and tended with great care and pride. Seeds were often sent from home, the gardens creating a sense of the familiar in the midst of the unknown and uncertainty, as well as offering opportunities for some control over the environment and a means of self-expression in the midst of an externally ordered and regimented existence.

There's much more about dogs, cats, rabbits, hunting, fishing, and I've barely touched on the hidden depths and delicate nuances in Where the Poppies Blow, or the quotes from letters home; nature in all its forms giving the soldiers something to write about as a beacon of hope in the midst of the carnage. Ordinary men writing about seemingly ordinary things which for them had become lifelines to hope and home; the gardens in particular creating a sense of sharing... soldiers could be moved up the line at a moment's notice but knew that their gardens would be tended and enjoyed by those that followed them.

It all reminded me of the gardeners of Heligan in Cornwall and the sadness I often feel as we walk around there. The gardening workforce enlisted en masse in 1914, signed the wall in the thunderbox room and left for the trenches, leaving the garden deserted and derelict until its restoration began in the 1990s. I might not be quite so sad now if I can think about those gardens on the Somme, but a sobering fact nonetheless, and one to which Heligan is a witness, was that whilst nature was somehow thriving on the Western Front, on the Home Front it was under threat. Meadows under the plough and thus irreplaceable, and the estates about to be broken up with the loss of the heirs in battle.

The sad reasons for the rise of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance here in the UK are well-known...the land effectively ploughed to great depth by artillery bombardment, the nitrogen from the ammunition and lime from the rubble of buildings fertilising the soil, the bones and blood of the men and horses doing likewise, and the flower proliferating where it hadn't before. Something that the Lost Gardens of Heligan will never forget either. Where the Poppies Blow the perfect testimony, and an extraordinary (and different) elegy to the lives of the Fallen.

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Where the Poppies Blow - The British Soldier, Nature, The Great War ~ John Lewis-Stempel

'Few today would go to war for the fields, woods, brooks of Britain. Or, rather, what is left of them. We have become de-natured and über-urban.'

I take extra convincing to read a book about the First World War these days. That might sound callous and narrow-mined but that's not the case... the truth is that though I have read so much over the years the older I get somehow the more harrowing I find it. I felt I knew enough, almost too much and so, when I saw that Where Poppies Blow by John Lewis-Stempel was on the Wainwright Prize shortlist, I have to own up to a moment of heart-sink at what may be ahead.

Because surely every book that could be written has been written...

Can there possibly be an unexplored angle to this conflagration...

But I had committed to reading as many books as I could and writing thoughts on them here so there could be no exceptions, and I think it is to John Lewis-Stempel's credit, and on reflection to the ordering of the chapters, that I succeeded and with honours, because Where Poppies Blow quickly became a compelling and memorable reading experience over two special days.

Nature, unchanging, 'assured and permanent' and had I ever really given a thought to how reassuring that immutability might have been to the soldiers in the trenches. There was solace and consolation in the seemingly most ordinary of details. 'We've the stars to share,' writes Second Lt. Max Plowman in a letter home. And for the British soldiers it was the landscape that was their identity and heritage. As JLS (we are on initial terms for the forseeable) elaborates, and it was something that explained a great deal, when the British viewed the countryside they saw nature, they saw God...

'British patriotism, unlike the patriotism of other countries, was not based on race, but shared values and love of countryside.'

After introductions JLS turns to the birds of the battlefield among them the nightingales who carried on singing regardless, and the skylarks...

'The song of the skylark was the soundtrack of the war on the Western Front wherever and whenever...'

The birds however were not a comfort to all, for many the sound of birdsong would invoke homesickness and melancholy, though Captain Charles Raven saw the swallows nesting in entrance to company HQ differently...

'These birds were angels in disguise. It is a truism that one touch of nature makes the world kin: those blessed birds brought instant relief to the nerves and tempers of men.

What a sobering thought that in peacetime we seem to have achieved what the war could not, with both nightingales and skylarks now on the RSPB endangered Red List. Indeed in another Wainwright short-listed book, The Wild Kingdom (more about it soon) Stephen Moss suggests that nightingale numbers are down to just 5000 birds in the UK.

John Lewis-Stempel moves on to horses ...160,000 rounded up in August 1914 and I was instantly reminded of a painting Bookhound and I saw recently at Torre Abbey in Devon.

August, Gold of Earth was painted in Plymouth in 1914 by Katherine Maud Hogarth Clay (1880-1930) a direct descendant of the 18th century artist William Hogarth...

As we sat and looked (Torre Abbey's art collection is beautifully laid out, spacious and with strategically placed sofas) we both wondered whether those horses had been sent off to war, whilst having a wry smile at the information alongside with its correction...

What a relief it was to learn that despite the undoubted suffering involved for the horses at least lessons had been learned from the Boer war. With the establishment and training of the Army Veterinary Corps, care of the animals was paramount, with casualty and evacuation protocol when injured mirroring that offered to soldiers.

Out of consideration that some may be eating while reading I'm going to gloss over the Lice and Rats and Microbes chapter but that's not to say I didn't find the details about Clostridium perfringens, Borrelia vincenti and Bacillus fusiforms fascinating and informative in that way that nurses do. Life was miserable for the men but they had ways of dealing with it all.

Moving swiftly onto flowers... well this chapter was a happy revelation though it should have come as no surprise, given the number of gardeners who enlisted, that trench flower beds were prolific and tended with great care and pride. Seeds were often sent from home, the gardens creating a sense of the familiar in the midst of the unknown and uncertainty, as well as offering opportunities for some control over the environment and a means of self-expression in the midst of an externally ordered and regimented existence.

There's much more about dogs, cats, rabbits, hunting, fishing, and I've barely touched on the hidden depths and delicate nuances in Where the Poppies Blow, or the quotes from letters home; nature in all its forms giving the soldiers something to write about as a beacon of hope in the midst of the carnage. Ordinary men writing about seemingly ordinary things which for them had become lifelines to hope and home; the gardens in particular creating a sense of sharing... soldiers could be moved up the line at a moment's notice but knew that their gardens would be tended and enjoyed by those that followed them.

It all reminded me of the gardeners of Heligan in Cornwall and the sadness I often feel as we walk around there. The gardening workforce enlisted en masse in 1914, signed the wall in the thunderbox room and left for the trenches, leaving the garden deserted and derelict until its restoration began in the 1990s. I might not be quite so sad now if I can think about those gardens on the Somme, but a sobering fact nonetheless, and one to which Heligan is a witness, was that whilst nature was somehow thriving on the Western Front, on the Home Front it was under threat. Meadows under the plough and thus irreplaceable, and the estates about to be broken up with the loss of the heirs in battle.

The sad reasons for the rise of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance here in the UK are well-known...the land effectively ploughed to great depth by artillery bombardment, the nitrogen from the ammunition and lime from the rubble of buildings fertilising the soil, the bones and blood of the men and horses doing likewise, and the flower proliferating where it hadn't before. Something that the Lost Gardens of Heligan will never forget either. Where the Poppies Blow the perfect testimony, and an extraordinary (and different) elegy to the lives of the Fallen.

Constants...

Team Tolstoy

Team TolstoyA year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010.
Everyone is welcome to board the troika and read along, meeting here on the 9th of every month to chat in comments about the book.

Team Tolstoy BookmarkDon't know your Bolkonskys from your Rostovs?
An aide memoire that can be niftily printed and laminated into a double-sided bookmark.

Port Eliot Festival

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